Apple Vision Pro: Can it really buck the trend of augmented reality flops?

"We've seen a variety of augmented reality and virtual reality products that have been loudly hyped and failed to live up to their promise," says Mar Hicks, a historian of technology and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology...

Yet enthusiasm for the game soon fizzled out.. "Much AR technology struggles to connect with ordinary people or only connects for a fleeting moment, as a fad or a game," says Hicks. "Given the price point of Apple's offering, that's unlikely to change."..

"I think a big part of it comes down to the fact that often plays like these get sold as new ambitious experiences, which often sends them far afield to where modern-day use cases actually are," says Smith.. Smith reckons Apple presented the Vision Pro smartly by showing use cases for the device that echoed how people interact with computers, rather than pie-in-the-sky potential..

Some technology commentators suggest that Apple should target the first version of the Vision Pro at specialist users, such as architects, who could use the augmented reality to imagine what a building might look like in situ..

Apple is facing a lot of competition too with Magic Leap releasing a second iteration of its goggles last year and Microsoft's Hololens 2 already on sale. Google, however, announced in March this year that it was giving up on the latest Enterprise Edition of its Glass smart glasses, giving no indication the project will be revived...

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